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In May 2022, exactly a month after the first season of Heartstoper premiered on Netflix, the coming-of-age romantic comedy-drama received a rare two-season renewal by the streamer. Almost five months after Season 3, the last of the two installments under that deal, dropped on Oct. 3, there is still no word from Netflix on the future of Heartsopper as another half-hour series, No Good Deed, also awaits a renewal decision two and a half months after its Netflix debut.
The streamer’s semi-annual What We Watched viewership data report released today provides more context to the series’ performance beyond Netflix’s weekly Top 10 rankers that may be factoring into the renewal conversations.
Season 3 of Heartstopper amassed 10.9M views from its Oct. 3 release until the end of 2024 to rank #130 among all of Netflix’s programs from June to December last year, according to the report. The show spent two weeks in Netflix’s global Top 10, peaking at #4, vs. three weeks each for Seasons 1 and 2.
Season 2, which was released on Aug. 3, 2023, clocked in 16.5M views in the second half of that year, ranking #59 on Netflix’s July-Dec 2023 report, peaking at #2 in the weekly Top 10.
To account for Season 2’s longer measured window, assuming a similar viewing pattern, Season 3 would be at about 11.6M views for the same period post-release that delivered 16.5M views for Season 2, making for a 30% season-to-season drop.
That is not great but also not too terrible. Over the last six months of 2024, the first two seasons of Heartstopper added combined 8.8M more views as fans were doing catch up around the release of Season 3. For comparison, the same period in 2023 added 7.5M views for Season 1 as Season 2 was dropping.
Those are respectable numbers, showing continuing interest in the title on the platform. They are significantly better than the delivery of comedies that released new seasons in the second half of 2024 which have since been canceled. For Instance, That ’90s show dropped two new sub-seasons (Parts), one at the end of June, which logged 6.7M views from July 1-Dec. 31, and one in August, which took in 5.6M views through the end of the year, with Part 1 of the show, released in 2023, adding 3.1M views over the six-month period. Released in August, Season 2 of Unstable drew 3.1M views through end of December, with Season 1 getting 2.7M views in the second half of the year.
Additionally, the views in the first three weeks for Season 2 of Heartstopper were comparable (and even slightly bit higher) than those for the first season, which triggered the 2-season pickup. While Season 3 did not make the same amount of noise that Seasons 1 and 2 did, the show has remained creatively strong, with Season 3 nabbing another 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes, as well as culturally relevant as the most recent installment tackled serious mental health issues.
Heartstopper‘s outsized impact across TV, social media, music and books and its legacy of LGBTQ representation makes it even more puzzling that, five months after the release of Season 3, Netflix is yet to renew the series for a fourth and likely final season. If history is any guidance, the longer a renewal decision is delated, the smaller the show’s odds of continuing are.
“I’m working very hard behind the scenes to get us a renewal for Heartstopper,” series creator Alice Oseman said at an event last week. “It is still ongoing, we don’t have a final answer yet, but there are so many people behind the scenes who are working really hard to make it happen. We’re feeling optimistic, we’re feeling hopeful, and hopefully we’ll be able to share some news about that sometime soon. Fingers crossed.”
In what would further complicate things, I hear the producers may not have options on the cast, which would mean having to make new deals for Season 4. Little known when they were cast in Heartstopper, the series’ two leads Kit Connor and Joe Locke are now both in-demand actors with busy schedules coming off a sold-out Broadway run in Romeo + Juliet and a starring role in Disney+’s Agatha All Along, respectively, so fitting in a new season of Heartstopper would not be a straightforward proposition.
Still, just like the cast of Euphoria recently reassembled for a final season, the duo would likely be willing to return to the series that made them stars should it get renewed.
Also a little disconcerting is the silence on the future of Netflix’s dark comedy No Good Deed, which premiered Dec. 12. A comparable series would likely be another Netflix half-hour, A Man On the Inside, which debuted Nov. 21 and was renewed less than a month later.
Both are from proven creators, Parks & Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine‘s Michael Schur (A Man On the Inside) and Dead To Me‘s Liz Feldman (No Good Deed). A Man on the Inside, starring Ted Danson, scored a little higher with critics (96% on Rotten Tomatoes) and spent five weeks in Netflix’s Top 10, including a stint at #1, vs. four weeks for No Good Deed, whose RT score is 80%.
Still, the overall viewership gap between A Man On the Inside and No Good Deed, which logged 18.8M and 16.6M views in their first four weeks of release, is not that large to explain why the two shows have been on such vastly different renewal tracks. (A Man On The Inside ranked #30 for July-Dec. 2024 with 21.6M views; No Good Deed was a respectable #69 with only its first 20 days falling in the measurement window.)
There is additional ratings data that Netflix does not share publicly, including completion rates and other viewer feedback that may explain the different outcome for the two series so far.
No Good Deed boasts one of the most star-studded comedy casts assembled recently that includes Lisa Kudrow, Ray Romano, Luke Wilson, Linda Cardellini, Denis Leary, O-T Fagbenle, Abbi Jacobson, Poppy Liu and Teyonah Parris.
Having so many major characters with their concurrent storylines may have left some viewers a little overwhelmed, something that will likely be adjusted with some streamlining should the mystery series get renewed for a second season.
